


When You Can't Hide From Your Feelings

by ambrolen



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, Short, dave/karkat mentioned but not the focus, dirk/jake mentioned but not the focus, rose/kanaya mentioned but not the focus, roxy/calliope mentioned but not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 00:30:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambrolen/pseuds/ambrolen
Summary: Dave was gay and that was fine.John didn’t notice when that phrase became his mantra.John didn’t notice when it was always in the back of his head.John didn’t listen when Dave tried to explain that he still liked girls, too. “You can like both, John.”John didn’t consciously think about any of it.Until he did.





	When You Can't Hide From Your Feelings

They had all been living on Earth C for a few years. John was mostly alone but got regular Snapchat updates from his friends. Roxy and Calliope. Rose and Kanaya. Terezi off who knows where. Dirk and… Jake… and, well, a new one just popped up from Dave and Karkat.  
“Dave is gay and that’s fine,” John muttered to himself. Then he paused. What did he just say? It wasn’t wrong but why would he say that? Well, it was wrong. Dave was ‘pansexual,’ whatever that meant. He remembered Dave explaining to him, or, trying to explain to him that you could like more than one gender.  
A feeling bubbled up in John, one he was normally able to shove down because there were more important things to focus on or people around or whatever excuse he could come up with. But this time John was alone in his house and the world had been safe for years.  
So John finally had the thought he had been afraid of having for a long time.  
“Am I gay?”

\---------------------------

No one had heard from John in over a week. While going a few days without talking wasn’t too uncommon, there had been no response when Rose had sent him some of Dave’s old webcomic she had found in her bookmarks, which was unusual. Worried, but preoccupied with her and Kanaya’s duties to the wrigglers, Rose asked Dave and Karkat to check in on him. Afterall, Dave was John’s best friend and Karkat could cut through bullshit if necessary so they were the most reasonable pair.  
Dave tried getting a hold of John before heading over, but with no response, which is also what he and Karkat received when they knocked on his door. Nothing seemed amiss when they went inside. Except the lights were all off and John’s phone was on his couch. They saw it light up with a text from Jade and noticed he had a lot of unread notifications. A week’s worth was a fair guess. Now more concerned, Dave grabbed the phone and the pair headed upstairs to John’s room.  
The door was cracked open. Dave looked at Karkat, who shrugged, then gently knocked on the door, opening it a crack further. “John?”  
“Dave?” it was a croaky response followed by sniffling and what sounded like the shuffling of papers. “Uh, sorry, yeah, come in.”  
“Uh, Karkat’s here, too,” Dave said as he pushed the door the rest of the way open.  
Like the rest of the house, the room was only lit by the light coming in through the window, but it didn’t take much light to see John’s walls were almost bare. Most of his posters had been ripped off the wall, little bits of paper still hanging by a pushpin. John had them loosely piled next to him, all of them a little bit crumpled. And John himself, well, he was smiling, but his eyes were slightly puffy and red and he was still sniffling as he sat on the floor, leaning back against his bed..  
“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” Karkat asked.  
“Inside voice, dude.” Dave said.  
“SORRY, uh, sorry. What the fuck happened?”  
John laughed. “What do you mean?”  
“Hm well let’s see here. First off you ripped your fucking posters of all your weird human actor crushes off the wall. Secondly you’re sitting on the floor in the dark like an emo dumbass. And third no one’s heard from you in a week. So I repeat: What the fuck happened?”  
John flinched a bit at the word “crushes.” “It’s been a week? Oh man sorry!” He laughed. “Time must have just slipped right on by me and, uh.” He started digging through his pockets. “It looks like I can’t find my phone.”  
“Here, dude.” Dave tossed John his phone. “Rose sent you one of my sweet ass comics and you didn’t respond so obviously this turned into a high alert crisis.”  
John caught his phone. “Oh she found a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic? Gotta check it out! Sorry for worrying you guys, but there’s nothing really going on here! Just, uh, redecorating!”  
“BULLSHIT.” Karkat glanced at Dave. “I MEAN uh, bullshit.”  
Dave gave him a thumbs up. “I have to agree with my partner here, ‘Bullshit.’”  
John’s smile faltered.  
Dave squatted down. “Seriously, man, we’re your friends. What’s up? Finally get some good fucking taste in movies and renouncing your mancrush on McConaughey? What the fuck I can’t say shit. Karkat actually got me to like Dane Cook so I can’t judge.”  
Karkat kicked Dave, pushing him enough to fall out of his squatting position. “Ow.” He straightened up, sat next to John, and awkwardly placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to rap about it?”  
Karkat managed to sigh in capslock, but John laughed.  
And he laughed.  
And he laughed.  
And he cried.  
And he leaned into Dave’s shoulder and asked, “How did you know you were gay?”


End file.
